Month: December 2008
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Live-Action Kung Fu Panda
I was pretty dubious when I saw some of the promo art for this movie. It looked like a possibly culturally insensitive piece of exploitation. Of course that was before I watched the trailer, which you can catch here: http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/chandnichowktochina/large.html Afterwards I found myself humming “From Chandni Chowk to China” all day. This Bollywood/Kung Fu…
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The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)–Review In Advance of Remake
The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) Review This 1951 film is an eloquent plea for understanding and logic and most of all peace. Klaatu, an alien in humanoid form, arrives to Earth. He says as he exits his spaceship in front of an army something to the effect of, ‘We come in peace..and with…
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Lady Vengeance….Vicious
Lady Vengeance Review Park Chan Wook concluded his revenge trilogy (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy) with Lady Vengeance. This disturbing film is more stylistically assured than Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and closer in tone to Oldboy than to Mr. Vengeance. It tells the story of Geum-Ja (played by Yeong-ae Lee), imprisoned for kidnapping and killing…
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Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle Succeeds with Visuals and Story
Slumdog Millionaire Danny Boyle is one of my personal favorite filmmakers around, in fact right below this review posting on the main page should be a feature appreciating him. Visually, the guy is a really distinctive force. He has so much range of expression you can’t necessarily pick out a Danny Boyle film from a…
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Appreciating Danny Boyle in Wake of Slumdog Millionaire
Peerless How many distinctive directors pack as much storytelling heft as visual panache? Few if any have the track record of Danny Boyle. I had considered putting Boyle in the Under Appreciated Page, but I just have so much to say about him I figured he deserved a front page spot. In film circles Boyle…
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Despairing in advance of The Punisher
My colleague at the University of Maryland demolished Ray Stevenson’s The Punisher in his review, and most critics have been similarly ill-disposed towards the new film. http://media.www.diamondbackonline.com/media/storage/paper873/news/2008/12/04/Diversions/A.Punishing.Viewing.Experience-3568157.shtml I for one had marshaled some hope, after the goofball camp of the Thomas Jane Punisher, that this seemingly more serious incarnation might be worth seeing. This does…
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Ray Stevenson Joins Strong Cast for Book of Eli-Hughes Comeback?
Hughes Brothers The writing directing team of Allen and Albert Hughes delivered powerful and distinctive, if flawed, work with Dead Presidents and Menace II Society. Since then they’ve done From Hell with Johnny Depp and some TV work, as well as being involved in New York, I Love You, but they haven’t really had their…
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Bourne 4-The Bourne Redundancy
Variety reported that Universal was moving ahead with a 4th Bourne film, based on an original story instead of a Robert Ludlum novel. They also mentioned that Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon were attached. What’s funny about this is Damon himself commented on how ridiculous a 4th Bourne film would be, and in doing so…